23. Hill training

Mile 20 – To train for races on hills, it’s best to run up hills. To train for races on the flat, it’s also best to run up hills.

I started the week with lots of walking, and an average number of steps over 10,000 each day. My lightheaded feeling wasn’t as bad as usual so, in the spirit of overdoing it, I walked up Wolstonbury Hill on Thursday. I haven’t been able to do that for more than a year, so it felt good to be up there to enjoy the view and to tick it off as a milestone in my recovery.

Of course, since doing that my right hip has been complaining, and I haven’t been able to walk far. I also have a twinge in my back, near my ribs on the right, which I hope will go away. If I look at my diary, though, I see that I have been worrying about different aches and pains each week, ever since the hospital team asked me to report absolutely everything to them. So I’ll try not to worry too much. I can still manage my morning stretches and a session on the turbo trainer okay, so it’s not that bad, and I know how to take painkillers.

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Last Wednesday’s was my final visit to the Montefiore Hospital for the induction phase – day 22 of cycle 5. I took in some doughnuts as a thank you and there were lots of hugs with my lovely team. I’ll be back there after I have recovered from the stem cell treatment (the date of which I still don’t know) for two more ‘consolidation’ cycles of chemotherapy. It will be strange to have Wednesdays free for a while and perhaps no longer have the hangover feeling on Saturdays. In the meantime, I’ll finish this week’s tablets, then wean myself off the steroids by taking a reducing dose of Prednisolone over three weeks. I still keep the red emergency card to hand, and I can contact the team, or my consultant, if I take a turn for the worse.

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Friday was my first attempt at DIY for a while, when I fixed a new house sign to the tree by the road. I went to great lengths to use fittings that would not show from the front, but that gave me the problem of coping with the uneven surface of the tree. As with all my DIY attempts, it took much longer than I could possibly imagine, but the sign is still in place despite the stormy weather over the weekend. In the evening my hands were cramping up, it’s been so long since I used hand tools.

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I’ve booked a ‘Writing for Wellbeing’ course hosted by the Macmillan Horizon Centre in Brighton, starting in September. It’s bound to clash with the isolation period after my stem cell transplant, but hopefully I’ll do it at some point, and you’ll see an improvement in the style of my blog ramblings.

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It has been another good week for socialising and going out for lunch, seeing my sister and her partner on Monday (Bolney Stage), friends on Friday (Morley’s Bistro) followed by a cup of Earl Grey with a running buddy (Washbrooks Farm), then seeing some ex-work colleagues on Saturday (The Plough and Attic Rooms in Rusper). Going out to meet people really does lift the spirits, although my waistline is paying the price.